Mission to Universe

by Gordon R. Dickson

  In fact, the shallow, basin-like area surrounding them was full of the native animals, dashing about constantly as a chain reaction of excitement kept a portion of them always in a panic. Kirk appeared on the wall beside Ben and handed Ben the black shape of the hand phone. “Where did they all come from?” Nora was asking.“The vine-tigers are driving them in,” said Ben, briefly, and was vaguely surprised to see the others on the wall staring at him. There were no vine-tigers in sight, but the responsibility of the native carnivores for what was before them was so obvious to Ben that he had to make a momentary mental adjustment to understand that it might not be obvious to the others.

  At any rate, there was no time to explain himself now. He lifted the hand phone to his lips.

  “Give me Coop and Hans both on a combined hookup,” he said to Observation. “—Coop? Hans?” The two voices answered. “Coop, you answer me first. Hans, second. Now, are you both sure you can’t keep coming?” He listened. “All right, then—you’re both with your teams inside the edge of a vine clump now? —And the herbivores don’t come close to the clumps? All right, how far from the ship are you?”

  “Less than a mile,” answered the voice of Coop.

  “A mile and a bit,” said Hans.

  “Can you see each other?” asked Ben. “No? All right, I’m looking in your direction. Each of you send up one smoke signal. Let me know when you shoot.”

  He stood watching, above the milling herbivores, already pounding the moss-grass into nonexistence, so that the grayish-brown gravelly earth showed under their hooves and above the hummocks forming the horizon two hundred yards to the south of the wall. For a moment there was only the blue sky beyond with a single cloud shaped like a white puffball, and then two thin plumes of gray smoke rose in the distance, as two voices spoke over the hand phone in his ear.

  “I see,” Ben answered. “You can’t be more than three hundred yards apart at the most. Now, here’s what I want you to do. If you get a chance to move toward the ship, move—but keep us informed here. Otherwise, as soon as it gets dark, the herbivores will start quieting down. Then I want you to start moving, regardless. Head straight for us here, and you should meet just beyond the hummocks to the south of us. But together or apart, keep coming until you get to the vine clump on top of the hummock dead in line with the southwest angle of the wall and the ship inside. Got that?”

  He waited while the voices of the two men acknowledged.

  “When you get that far, wait,” he said. “I’ll tell you what to do after that. Now each of you—Coop first. Repeat what I’ve just told you.”

  They repeated.

  “All right,” said Ben. “Remember, keep in contact. I'm going to cut my connection with you now, but there’ll be someone at the other end in Observation from now on.” He hesitated. “Any questions?”

  There were none. He gave the hand phone back to Kirk and turned to Lee, pointing down into the trench in front of the wall. Several bodies of herbivores lay there—beasts who had been crowded by their fellows into a fatal fall.

  "There’ll probably be more of that as the day goes on,” he said to Lee. “See if you can’t rig up some kind of grappling hooks, and fish the bodies up so that you can use them. I want you to keep the processing going as long as you can.”

  “If I can keep it going until night,” said Lee, “we ought to end up with a ton and a half of protein grains. That’d be enough to take care of us for nine months.”

  “Good,” said Ben. “All right, everybody get busy. Walt—keep anyone you need in the Sections to get the ship ready to lift, but send me at least four more armed men for the walls, here.”

  They went about their various duties. Ben stood on the wall a little longer to check his conclusion that the number of herbivores in the basin area surrounding them was in-creasing still, then went back down the slope and into the ship. For him there was nothing to do now but wait until sunset.

  A sensible man who had been running short on both food and sleep would take this opportunity to get some of both. Ben went down to the lounge and ate, then back to his own quarters and lay on his bed. A sensible man, he reminded himself again, would get some sleep. But he did not.

  He lay on his back on the bed, staring at the ceiling of white-painted metal over him while his imagination threw up possible accident after possible accident in the process of getting the eight men back safely inside the ship—and tried to come up with a solution for each contingency.

  After a while, a curious vibration attracted his attention, felt through the very structure of the bed he was lying on, and the floor and walls around him. He got up, masked, and went outside and discovered what it was. The basin was now filled with herbivores, thousands of them,and the constant drumming of their charging, panic-stricken hooves was sending a vibration through the ground all about.

  He stood on the wall looking out. Lee was beside him,watching the grappling up of some of the dead herbivores crowded into the trench—a trench already filled level with the ground about them by those same bodies. Now, weaker herbivores were being crushed to death by their fellows against the stone face of the wall.

  “If they keep that up,” said the voice of Lee in Ben’s ear, “they’ll be over the top of the wall before too many hours.”

  “Yes,” said Ben shortly. There was no point in discussing the obvious. He glanced at the sun and at his watch. It was midafternoon. He decided to stay on top of the wall for a while in case things should suddenly get worse.

  The ground cover had long ago been hammered into the hard-packed earth by the hooves of the herbivores. Now a steady fog of dust was rising. Rising, too, was the tide of dead and trampled herbivores at the outer face of the wall. Below Ben a ramp of dead and dying animals was building ever closer to the point at which they would spill over the wall. By sunset the backs of the stampeding animals were just below Ben’s feet. He could have stepped out on them.

  The animals were Voiceless, but the sound of their running and snorting for breath was now a deafening roar. A sthe sun touched the horizon, Ben went down to speak to Lee. He had to shout with his lips close to Lee’s ear to make himself understood.

  “Get your equipment aboard!” he ordered. Lee nodded.

  With the setting of the sun the herbivores farther off began to slow down with their evening quietude. The three moons were already high in the sky. But those in the flat area close around the walls, long since lost to anything but the reflex to run, run, and keep running until danger was left behind or exhaustion dropped them, continued their milling. Their backs crowded against and above the wall now like the backs of steers in a pen.

  “Ben!” It was Lee on the wall at his side, shouting in his ear. “They’ve reached the vine clump you told them to come to—both Hans and Coop’s teams! They say the herbivores are quieting down some out beyond this basin—but the vine-tigers are out.” He pushed something into Ben’s hand. Ben looked down and saw it was a hand phone.

  “What’re you doing up here?” he demanded.

  “No one else to spare!” shouted Lee. “I’ve got everything aboard and I—”

  Something came out of the smoke-like dust and the tricky moonlight, running with incredible speed across the backs of the racing herbivores and launched itself through the air and onto Lee. They went down together on top of the wall, the shape of the vine-tiger on top. Moving without thinking, Ben took one long stride toward them, lifted his right hand, and brought the metal weight of the hand phone down with all his strength between the shoulder blades of the carnivore, above where the large nerve-complex would be.

  For a moment the alien shape sprawled limply. In that moment, Ben dropped the hand phone, grasped the upper part of the furry body, and, using all his strength, hauled the heavy creature free of Lee. Just as it began to struggle once more, he sent it toppling inside the wall. It twisted in the air, falling, trying to right itself like a cat before it hit, but as it landed on its side, half a dozen half-guns from the surr
ounding walls hammered it into death and stillness. Ben snatched up the hand phone.

  “Help, up here on the wall!” he shouted into it. “Lee’s been savaged by one of the carnivores! Get Nora. Get some men out here to carry him back in.” He remembered suddenly the purpose for which Lee had brought him the hand phone. “—And connect me with Hans and Coop in the vine clump!”

  “You’re connected—” It was the voice of Kirk Walish. “They’ll be right up to get Lee.” There was a moment’s rushing silence in the earphone, and then Ben heard Coop’s voice.

  “Ben?”

  “Coop? Listen to me!” said Ben harshly, holding the mouthpiece close to his lips. “The herbivores’ll be over the wall here in fifteen or twenty minutes, and they’ll swarm over the ship and crush her—and we’ll have to lift. That means you and Hans have to come in—now!”

  “We can’t—”

  “I know!” snapped Ben. “But I’m going to clear a path for you.” He turned and ran down to the comer of the wall, where the firing box stood, the ends of the two explosive cables plugged into the first two of the seven detonator sockets in front of the vertical plunger. He spoke again into the phone. “Now listen. Get ready to run, single file. I’m going to blow a path for you right through the middle of these herbivores. When you see the explosion, start running, and don’t stop until you’re up on the wall here. Understand me?”

  “Yes,” said the voice of Coop. There was a little pause.When Coop spoke again, Ben heard an odd note in his voice. “I’ll let Hans and his men go first.”

  “All right,” said Ben. There was no time to discuss the matter. He reached down and jerked one cable end out of its detonator socket. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” said Coop’s voice.

  “Then go!” Ben pushed down on the plunger. A great, hundred-yard long knife blade of fire and upflung black bodies sprang suddenly and momentarily into being in a line between him and the vine clump where the two teams were sheltering.

  The explosion rocked the ground. For a moment everything was still, and then the herbivores were in scrambling stampede away from the line of the explosion. Ben stared at the vine clump, dimly visible through the settling dust in the triple moonlight, but no figures had emerged from it.

  There were still some scattered herbivores in the fifty yards between the far end of the explosive line and the vine clump, and the first few of the herbivores were beginning to be pushed by their struggling mates back across the path of the explosion.

  “Run!” shouted Ben into the phone. “What’s wrongt here? Run!”

  “—No. . .” A babbling, yammering voice, a man’s voice distorted by terror, which Ben could hardly recognize as the voice of Hans Clogh, came from the receiver of the hand phone. “We can’t make it! They’re closing in already. Tell them to bring the ship and get us! Bring the ship—”

  Hans’s voice was cut off.

  “Hans!” shouted Ben. “We can’t bring the ship—you know that! We’d have to shift out to orbit and in again. It’d take us hours! Run—” But, with despair rising in him, he saw that the open lane through the herbivores was already closing. He took a deep breath. “Coop!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Can you stay put in that vine clump for as much as ten hours?”

  “No,” answered Coop. “Not for one hour. There’s vine-tigers all around us and more coming in all the time. Sooner or later they’ll come in after us.”

  “All right, then!” said Ben. “Listen. I can do it once more—open things up like I did just then. Get ready. I’m going to do it, and when I do I want you to start in with everyone you can bring—in Hans’s team as well as your own. Those who won’t come you’ll have to leave behind.You understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right, then.” Ben reached down and put the remaining cable end into a detonator socket. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Go!” shouted Ben.

  Once more as Ben pushed the plunger, the line of fire spouted. For a second Ben saw nothing—then, through the thinning dust he saw black figures straggling along the blasted line toward the fort. There were three . . .four. . . six of them—and that was all. Running last, he saw the gangling figure of Coop.

  “Guns! Rifles!” shouted Ben turning around—because big, weasel-like figures were humping their way at full gallop across the backs of the stunned and milling herbivores to cut off the runners. Ben’s own fingers twitched—foolishly, he had forgotten a rifle for himself. But weapons were sounding on the wall on either side of him.

  The runners came on, slipping and staggering on the bodies under their feet. The open lane began to narrow and close . . . Herbivores were breaking across it. Now,the first man was staggering up the slope of herbivore bodies to the walls, making the last dozen feet on hands and knees. It was John Edlung.

  Behind John was a masked face that in this wild moment Ben did not recognize. Then another . . . and another.Then, last of all came Coop, reeling, beating his way through the increasing waves of scrambling herbivores, like a fullback. Then Coop was on the wall.

  “Everybody into the ship!” roared Ben.

  He threw an arm around the staggering exhausted Coop and brought up the rear of the rush for the airlock below.

  In seconds, they were all aboard, and the airlock closed behind them. Ben let go of Coop, and the younger man, gasping, fell to his knees.

  But Ben had no time to spare for Coop now. Others could take care of those who had just run the gauntlet of the herbivores. Ben, himself, ran down the hallway into his office and from his office into Control Section.

  Control Section was manned and ready. Walt was standing above Tessie Sorenson, seated at the Control panel. Ben glanced into the screen above Tessie’s head and saw a view of the south wall they had just left. Already, herbivores were being shouldered over it, and the figures of vine-tigers were appearing upon it.

  “Ready to lift?” he asked Walt.

  “Ready to lift,” answered Walt, expressionlessly. Tessie looked up sharply.

  “But Hans and somebody else are still out there!” she said.

  The herbivores, like a river in flood topping a levee, were pouring over the wall now and down upon the ship itself. The outer hull rang now to what sounded like muffled blows against it. Ben leaned forward over Tessie’s shoulder and pressed the intercom key for Observation.

  “Observation,” he said. “Can you still connect me with Hans? Can you get an answer from either of the transceivers out in that vine clump?”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the voice of Kirk Walish.

  “No answer—sir.”

  “Thank you.” Ben let go of the intercom key. He straightened up. He was aware of Walt watching, of Tessie staring at him. He felt the crew around him, holding their breath in expectation of one more miracle.

  He looked at the screen. The herbivores were already piling up around the ship, and as he looked, the hull creaked to the mounting pressure of their bodies. There were no more miracles.

  “Prepare to shift,” he said to Walt.

  “Prepare to shift!” said Walt emotionlessly to Tessie. She hesitated. Ben stared at her with burning eyes.

  “Report,” she whispered into the phone before her.

  “Match,” said the dry voice of Kirk Walish.

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then Computation Section spoke.

  “Match.”

  “Match!” whispered Tessie, looking up at Ben.

  “Sir,” said Walt. “Ready to make the shift.”

  “Shift then,” said Ben. The universe moved imperceptibly under their feet. The screen above Tessie’s head showed only the stars. “Begin Observation and Computation to one light-year’s distance from Polaris.”

  He turned on his heel, not waiting for Walt’s acknowledgment of the new shift order. The door to his office was open, and standing by his desk was Nora. She had heard it all. He went into his office, closing the door behind him
.He felt half-blind with the emotion of the order he had just given.

  “What is it?” he asked her numbly.

  “The six who came in. I just wanted to report they’re all right,” she said. “I’ve given them sedatives.”

  “Good,” he said, thickly. He looked into her face, expecting to see there the horror of him that he felt must be in the minds of all those aboard after his order to shift out and abandon the two men below. But in Nora’s face he could see only sympathy for him and something else that might be an incalculable tenderness—a tenderness he did not dare to believe. He stood, helpless, staring at her.

  “Oh, Ben . . .” she said, taking half a step toward him.He woke suddenly to the act of weakness he had almost let himself slip into committing. He stiffened and stepped back.

  “That’s all, then,” he said gratingly. “I think it’s high time I had some sleep myself. Try not to disturb me for the next few hours—if that’s possible!”

  He turned and stumped into his bedroom. And only when he had slammed the door behind him did he admit to himself that he had not dared, after saying these harshest words he could dredge up to throw at her, to stay and look her in the face.

  Chapter 7

  The phase ship was on “hold.” All three Sections had locked their instruments to maintain the ship automatically in its present position in the universe relative to the Galactic Centerpoint. All aboard—with the exception of Lee, sleeping under electric sedation in the dispensary—were present in the Lounge. Ben, Walt, and Nora came in, Walt and Nora finding seats near the entrance of the room, Ben continuing on until he could mount the little platform against the wall and turn to face everyone present.

  “This is to be a brief announcement of a decision I and Captains Bone and Taller have just reached in conference—” Ben broke off as John Edlung, next to Coop, the youngest man aboard, started abruptly and jerked his head around to stare behind him at the Lounge entrance. He looked back immediately and guiltily. His oval face under its almost-white blond hair, was paler than Ben had ever before noticed its being. The past experience on Old Twenty-nine, thought Ben, must have hit John hard.